Transferable data volume over mobile radio networks will for the foreseeable future be a scarce resource. The bit rate available to the individual user depends mainly on location due to network coverage and time of the day due to behavior of other users.
Most existing solutions always start data transfer immediately and prioritize it dependent on requested/subscribed priority and type of service.
Some terminals have data management functionality implemented, that reduce the amount of data traffic over mobile networks, for example by reducing the size of transferred pictures.
The Windows operating system offers Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS), which monitors used data rate for IP connections and spreads data transfer over time using idle network bandwidth, considering different priority levels.
Access networks allowing high data rate often do only cover a fraction of the footprint of access networks with lower data rate. Behavior and moving pattern of the user as well as of other users is not considered.
Scheduled data transfer is not possible. Not all data, especially download of large volumes, need to be performed instantaneously but could be delayed in the range of minutes or hours.
Existing prioritization mechanisms have no fine grained weighting mechanism to optimally treat different transfer requests dependent on urgency and content type. For example, security patches of a notebook's operating system should get a higher priority compared to an application update package.
There is currently no possibility to do content based charging of data transfer to third parties in a generic way. The operator can only charge by data volume. The cost of content transfer is to a large extent unpredictable for the consumer, which gives reason to conflicts and hinders business growth.